GOVERNMENT AND ADMINISTEATION OF NORWAY. 



161 



Fig. 81. — Vardo. 

 Scale 1 : 100,000. 



deaneries (prorsfler), 441 parishes {prœstcgjeld), and 909 pastorates {sogne). All 

 other worships enjoy perfect toleration, but Nonconformists number altogether 

 scarcely more than 6,;300, 



Military service is obligatory on all Norwegians upwards of twenty-five years 

 old, ecclesiastics, pilots, and the inhabitants of Finmark alone excepted. But the 

 army consists in reality of little more than the cadres, the battalions under drill, 

 and military schools. The regular forces consist of less than 2,000 men, 

 all volunteers, enlisted for three years. Conscripts pass through the recruiting 

 school, which lasts forry-two days for the infantry, ninety for the artillery and 

 cavalry, and return for tlirce or four years to take part in the exercises for less 

 than one month annually. The King is em- 

 powered by the constitution to keep a guard of 

 Norwegian volunteers in Stockholm, and to re- 

 move 3,000 men from one state to the other for 

 the manœuvres, bvit for no other purpose. 



The navy is relatively much more important 

 than the army, comprising (1879), 4 monitors 

 and 26 other steamers, with 144 guns, besides 

 92 sailing and rowing vessels. Fortifications 

 defend the entrance of Christiania- fiord, where 

 is situated Horten, the chief naval station, and 

 there are a few other defensive works at certain 

 exposed points of the coast. Of these the 

 northernmost in Norway and in the world is 

 that of Vardo, at the entrance of Yaranger- 

 fiord, beyond the seventieth parallel and within 

 the arctic circle. The crews, numbering 2,050, 

 are nearly all volunteers, and all between the 

 ages of twenty-two and thirty-five engaged in 

 shipping or fishing, or resident in the seaports, 

 are enrolled to the number of 60,000, with 

 liability to be called out in case of national 

 danger. 



The Norwegian Budget is generally balanced, 

 and amounted in 1877-8 to £2,235,000, more than half derived from the customs. 

 The chief outlay is not, as mostly elsewhere, for war expenses or in payment of old 

 obHgations, although the debt amounted in 1878 to £5,130,000, contracted mainly 

 for the construction of railways. 



Administratively the country is divided into 517 communes, of which 61 are 

 urban and 456 rural {herredcr). INIunicipal affairs are managed by two elective 

 bodies, an administrative council {formandskah) of from three to twelve members, 

 and a representative council {reprœsentanM-ah) three times more numerous. The 

 execution of their decisions is intrusted in the towns to magistrates {horrjesmcster 

 and rudmand) named by the King, in the rural communes to prefects {amtmand) 



Depth under 27 27 to 55 

 Fathoms. Fathoms. 



1 Mile. 



